


as if you were on fire from within

by greenbriars



Category: Inception (2010), Sex Education (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - High School, Drunk Sex, Fluff, Implied Mpreg, M/M, mentions of mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23463139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbriars/pseuds/greenbriars
Summary: After a party, Eames wakes up to find himself in bed with Arthur. Arthur, who is one of the Untouchables-wealthy, beautiful, and cruel. Arthur, who could freeze out a room if he exhaled a little too hard.Eames doesn't expect to talk to him again after that one-night stand. He resigns the memory of that night to being just that—a memory. He will continue to appreciate from afar the precise origami of Arthur's dress-sense and effortless control over the student body (and some of the faculty). They don't exactly run in the same circles, and if he's being honest with himself, Arthur is so far up the food chain he's practically stratospheric. Untouchable.And they don't—until they're staring at each other over Adam Groff's engorged penis, agog, and Eames is forced to talk him down. And the very next day Arthur approaches him with a business proposition: running a sex clinic in school.ASex EducationAU.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39





	as if you were on fire from within

Eames wakes up so quickly and seamlessly he wonders if he was ever properly asleep. He certainly doesn't feel well-rested, but behind his closed lids the world is a peaceful, red haze.

The first thing he notices is the smell of the sheets—not his own. The second thing is that it's much too warm, and much too bright. His head is fine, but his mouth is dry. He swallows experimentally, and regrets it. The third—there is a leg pressed against his.

He opens his eyes, and finds himself nearly nose-to-nose with—

"Arthur?" he croaks, the word scraping up his throat.

He's dozing peacefully, his face more relaxed than Eames has ever seen it. His eyes are long, feathering   
against his cheekbones, and his mouth is pink and slack. His lips are slightly chapped.

All his breath leaves his body.

It's _Arthur._ Arthur, who can ice out a room by frowning slightly. Who has reduced many a grown man to tears. Who can rock a sweater-vest like no one else.

For whom Eames has secretly harboured a fervant flame for nearly three years.

Arthur is sprawled out next to Eames, the bedsheets covering his toes and the bottom-half of his abdomen—and not much else. Eames tracks the curve of his lean chest and the starburst of freckles on his right shoulder. Something lodges in his throat.

He reaches out for the bedside table. He rolls, and his stomach rolls with him.

Except there is no bedside table, since this is not his room. He overbalances and tumbles right over the edge of the bed, and takes most of the bedcovers with him.

Arthur, a lovely tangle of pale limbs and improbably messy hair, cracks open one baleful eye.

By the time Eames has managed to untangle himself from the bedsheets—which took an embarrassing amount of time—Arthur is already sitting up in one sinuous move. Blankets pool around his slim hips—which are speckled with bruises the size of small coins, oh _god—_ as he throws his shirt over his head.

It's the littlest shirt known to man, barely even a crop top. Three-quarters of his toned stomach is on display. And though Eames is still sorry to see the loss of that endless expanse of creamy skin, Arthur's back in a new wonder: sinewy, and rippling with every movement.

The first words he speaks to Eames, tossed carelessly over his shoulder, are: "If you tell anyone about this, I'll destroy you."

Eames knows he's staring hungrily, and forces himself to stop. Tearing his eyes away, he asks the first question that leaps to mind.

"Did we have sex?"

"You don't remember?" Arthur pauses where he's yanking his tight, tight trousers past his hips.

"Just answer the question," he says, terse and more curt than he means. He's on the same bed as Arthur, breathing the same air as Arthur. Arthur is talking to _him_. This simple observation will never cease to disorient. His head is starting to pound.

"Well, I'm hardly here because I enjoy your company." He pauses, and then grants Eames mercy. "Yes, we did, Mr Eames."

Eames can't remember anything. His mouth tightens miserably.

"Did we use protection?" he asks, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his free hand.

For the first time, a look of uncertainty crosses Arthur's face, tinged with annoyance. "I think so. But I can't see the condom anywhere."

He half-heartedly pokes at a few piles of the mess, then narrows his eyes at Eames—who is standing gormlessly in one corner, wrapped up in someone else's sheets.

Arthur pats his pockets down for his cellphone, and then stands up, making to leave. Eames scrambles to get into proper clothing. In the process, he kicks over a glass beer bottle, thankfully empty.

Arthur has already turned away, like he doesn't give half a damn.

"Is this your house?" Eames asks, when they make their way out of the bedroom.

Arthur rolls his eyes. "If I'd known you'd be so out of it, I wouldn't have bothered sleeping with you. Ari threw the party, remember?"

Ah, yes. It had been a stupid question the minute it left Eames's lips. He knows what Ariadne's house looks like—in a word, massive. Arthur's reply still stings though.

Arthur navigates them to a nondescript door and says, "wait here," before knocking quietly. When there's no answer, he cracks it open.

Through the gap, Eames sees Arthur weave his way through mounds of discarded clothing to the double bed in the centre. A messy brunette head pokes through the sheets when Arthur lays a hand on the lump beneath the covers, making a sort of chirping noise. Arthur leans down and presses a fond kiss to Ariadne's brown hair, and straightens.

Eames backs quickly away from the door, fiddling with his phone. He holds down the home button, and the red battery sign flashes at him. Flat.

"Are you going home?" he asks when Arthur has slid the door shut with scarcely a sound. Impressive.

"Mmm," he murmurs, tapping away at his phone avidly. "Yes. Gotta change. Then breakfast, I think."

He looks perfectly poised as he wends his way to the kitchen, opening the fridge to peer inside. He reaches a hand in—all the way in.

"Ah-ha," he says, blandly, as he unearths an energy drink from its depths. He uncaps it and drinks thirstily, then tosses it over. Eames catches it without humiliating himself, so he counts it as a win.

"Uh..."

"Drink the Gatorade, Eames. It'll help with the hangover."

Arthur's right, to absolutely no one's surprise. Of course he would be too put-together for a hangover. He doesn’t even have any pillow-creases on his face, for god’s sake. Eames wants to know how Arthur knew there would anything edible in the fridge after last night's bacchanalia.

His lips close around the mouth of the bottle, where Arthur's lips had previously rested. The tips of his ears turn pink.

"We could get breakfast together," he offers after a swig. Since it's practically a given that they'll be missing first period.

"No."

Eames isn't disappointed. He's not. Eames doesn't remember the night they spent together, so for all intents and purposes, he still doesn't know Arthur at all.

But now the idea of it has wormed its way into his subconscious and sunk its claws in, bunkered down in the corners of his mind. Snatches of the night are coming back to him in pieces; incomplete, but better than nothing. Dancing wildly, making out with a stranger—two strangers?—and then someone with their back pressed flush against his front, smelling of lemon verbena and sweat and the herbal tinge of gin, and in his drunken haze Eames notes the lift of a cheek—a smile.

Eames leans a little towards Arthur as they walk out the door, and takes a discreet sniff. Lemon verbena tickles his nose, like the expensive hand lotion his mother used before things went to shit. Alright, that means he didn't lose that much time. An hour, at the most.

Arthur is still walking, getting further away from him. Eames doesn't realize he's stopped in his tracks. He scrambles to catch up.

"I guess I'll see you then," he says, a little desperately. They won't speak of this again, but will Arthur continue to ignore him in school?

"Hmm."

And then Arthur turns a corner and disappears without a backward glance.

#

For some reason, Ariadne had held her party on a Wednesday. Who does that? And it had ballooned to unreasonable proportions, and now half the student population is stumbling around the hallways, hungover as anything.

Except Yusuf. Yusuf is grinning when he jumps all over Eames, calling him a casanova, crowing about last night.

"Why is the world so bright?" he complains, and Yusuf laughs as he slams the locker door way too loudly.

Eames is already wearing sunglasses, the world a little friendlier and dimmer, which is a good thing, because it makes it easier to speak his next words.

"I had sex with Arthur," he confesses.

"You _what_?" Yusuf shouts.

"Softer," he pleads, ears ringing.

"Eames!" Yusuf bellows. Eames wants to die.

"The details are hazy, but yeah, I think so. Can I have your water?"

Yusuf takes out his bottle, but before he hands it over he muses, "Well, at least you're not a virgin anymore."

That's true. There are worse things than having this connection to Arthur. It sends a tingle through him, and Eames hugs his arms to his body.

Speaking of Arthur, where is he? The rest of the Untouchables had sailed by earlier, flawless as usual. They rule over the school with an iron fist. And Mal, resplendent in a cashmere sweater and a little leather skirt and kitten-heel boots, had called out, "Paisley on paisley again? Someone needs to change thrift shops."

Saito had smiled indulgently at her, and Ariadne had looked apologetic behind her own massive sunglasses. Eames is used to it. 

But Arthur had not been with them. Weird.

"Sex has consequences," Eames tiredly reminds his exuberant best friend, who refuses to be put off.

"Yeah, but it's not like you're going to father Arthur's evil spawn," Yusuf scoffs jovially.

Arthur's not evil, Eames wants to say. He gave me an energy drink, and his hair looks very nice in the sunlight.

"Wait. You did use a condom, right? _Right_? Eames!"

#

Eames is in the lab, watching something in a conical flask bubble while swallowing to keep his gag reflex under control, when something _thunks_ against the window beside him.

He looks up.

 _Thunk_. Another pebble.

He looks out the window.

Arthur is standing on the grass, staring straight at him and looking pissed.

"Come out," he mouths.

Eames tries to communicate that he's in biology class via gestures, and Arthur makes his eyes really big and scary and practically spits out the words, "Come out _now_."

"Uh," Eames says, raising his hand. "Mr Hendricks. I need to be excused."

Hendricks frowns. "It's the last period."

"I have—I have haemorrhoids," he blurts out, and then wants to smack himself in the forehead. People around him are starting to stare.

"Oh. I feel your pain." Hendricks tries to high-five him. Eames wants to commit suicide. Or homicide.

Arthur looks more irritated than usual; which is to say, positively murderous. He's changed out from his scandalous party clothes into something more typical: navy blue sweater over a white button-up, the collar perfectly and ruthlessly starched, and pressed trousers.

Eames feels his heartbeat ratchet up a notch, and he instinctively defaults to what Ariadne calls 'defensive flirtation' and what Yusuf calls 'very weird for someone who's an inexperienced virgin'.

"Darling," Eames says, affecting a leer. It's half-hearted at best. He spreads his hands. "If you wanted to see me so soon, you could've just texted me instead of damaging school property."

"One, don't call me that. Two, _don't_ call me that."

Eames drops the act.

"So," Arthur says after a pause, wrinkling his perfect nose. Eames is instantly self-conscious; he's thrown up twice already. "About the condom. I'm maybe less than 99% sure we used one."

Eames raises his brows. He snarks, "Arthur Levine, less than a hundred percent sure about something? Someone call the national news channel."

Arthur scowls more deeply at him, but doesn't say anything.

Eames's shoulders sag. "Alright, so what now?"

#

The pharmacist won't let Eames buy the morning-after pill, much to Arthur's chagrin.

He steals Eames's shades, pastes a smile on, and goes up to the counter. His answers to the lady's questions are crisp.

"Have you taken contraceptives before?"

"No."

"When did you last have sex?"

"Last night."

"Did you use a contraceptive method?"

"Unsure."

Eames butts in, because he can't keep his big mouth shut. "We couldn't find the condom."

If Arthur's spine got any straighter, he could use it to sketch elaborate architectural diagrams, or find the quickest path from Point A to Point B.

"Do you or any of your immediate family members have any health conditions?"

Eames can't see his face, but Arthur's shoulders go abruptly rigid.

Very quietly, he says, "My dad has MS." His voice is doing a very good impression of coming from a plank of wood, except for the thread of pain running through it. "He was just diagnosed. It's pretty bad."

He turns his head a fraction, and Eames ducks down, pretending to be reading the labels on band-aids.

"May I have my pill now?" Back to normal Arthur, cool and professional. "And please don't tell anyone I was here."

The lady hands it over, smiling politely. "I don't know who you are."

Arthur smiles back like that's patently ridiculous. At least he doesn't makes Eames fork out the astronomical sum for the pill.

#

He does, however, make Eames buy him a can of coke from the convenience store.

They sit on the trunk of a tree that has fallen across a small depression, side-by-side, shoulders nearly touching. Arthur has the instruction sheet open before him, scanning it intently. His sleeves are rolled up, exposing lean, tanned forearms. His legs cross and re-cross.

"Did you mean to sleep with me?" Eames asks, looking ahead.

Arthur looks up, then back down at his instructions. "Yes, Eames, I definitely said 'yes'."

"Okay." Eames slouches a little. "Why?"

Arthur frowns, surly. "Maybe I just felt like it. Maybe I make out with nerdy boys when I'm sad."

"I'm not a nerd," Eames protests, picking up on literally the least important part of that sentence. He always thought he was a bit of a loner outcast, what with having only one (and a half, if he counts Ariadne) friend, and hardly enough spending money.

His companion's mouth quirks upwards. "You were the lead in the school play, what, three years running?"

The non-sequitur throws him. "You know I do theatre?" His heart is rabbiting in his chest.

"Oh, I'm sorry, _theatre_. See? Nerd." But it doesn't sound as cutting as it could.

"So why nerdy boys?" Eames pushes, feeling something lodge in his throat. He coughs. "Don't tell me it's because they think they're in love with you."

A crease appears between Arthur's brows. He flips to the other side of the instruction sheet.

"You're very inquisitive today," Arthur sniffs, peering down his Romanesque nose. "So what if they are?"

Eames blinks. He can't tell if Arthur is serious, or alluding to something, or trying to let Eames down easy.

"Well, darling, I'm not in love with you," he announces, putting every ounce of acting ability into the line.

Arthur just smiles in a bland, patronising sort of way, like _of course not_ , which should really be more annoying.

"Don't call me that."

He picks up the circular foil packet, which bulges in the middle with the tablet, and presses down on it. Something about the brisk efficiency of his fingers makes Eames's mouth dry.

"Were you sad because of your dad?"

Arthur goes still. His eyes flick up, and then down, and then he sets the pill packet neatly aside, on top of the instruction sheet. His face could be carved from stone.

"A little." He looks up at the dense canopy of leaves, and then meets Eames's eyes briefly. "He had to quit his job, and he doesn't live with us anymore but someone needs to take care of him. My mum's stressed about it."

Everyone knows Arthur's mom is a single parent, that Arthur's dad walked out on her a decade ago and has since remarried, but of course no one dares to give him shit about it. On the other hand, Eames hasn't had a personal relationship with either of his parents in a long time, and it's one of Mal's favorite things to needle him about.

Arthur chews on his lip. It's a surprisingly human gesture.

"Was it really your first time?" Arthur asks quietly. "Only I heard your friend talking about it in school. Loudly."

"Yes."

Arthur doesn't say anything, only looks pensive.

"How was I?" Eames refuses to be ashamed for it, even if it is a little embarrassing. Also, he has to know. "At the sex bit?"

Arthur hums, cocking his head. "Not great."

Eames's heart sinks.

"Not terrible, though," Arthur continues. "I guess it can't be helped, if you were blackout drunk and I was... regular drunk."

Then he sighs, turning his coke round and round in his hands. "I'm sorry about... not obtaining your consent. I didn't realise. I hope it wasn't too much of a shock to wake up next to me."

It had been a shock, but not for the reasons Arthur thinks. Eames shrugs. "It's fine. But thank you for asking."

"Just repaying the favor."

When Eames raises his eyebrows in question, he elaborates, "Because you kept asking if I was okay."

"It's important to check in." It's sex education 101; someone much less qualified than his sex therapist mom—before she got arrested anyway—could have told him that.

"Every ten seconds, though?"

Eames jams the heels of his hands to his eyes, wishing the ground would just swallow him up. This entire day has been a bust, embarrassment after embarrassment. He just wants it to be over.

He nearly misses Arthur's next words.

"Thank you for checking in. A lot of guys don't."

Eames looks up. Arthur... doesn't smile, exactly, but his face softens fractionally, permafrost thawing, in a way that some might say could resemble the _prelude_ to a smile. He tips his can of coke towards Eames, who taps his against it.

Cheers.

#

Eames doesn't expect to talk to him again after that one-night stand. He resigns the memory of that night to being just that—a memory. He will continue to appreciate from afar the precise origami of Arthur's dress-sense and effortless control over the student body (and some of the faculty). They don't exactly run in the same circles, and if he's being honest with himself, Arthur is so far up the food chain he's practically stratospheric. Untouchable.

And they don't—until they're staring at each other over Adam Groff's engorged penis, agog, and Eames is forced to talk him down, and the very next day Arthur approaches him with a business proposition.

Sex therapy.

**Author's Note:**

> i realize i have a terrible softness for "local nerd + horrible bitch with secret feelings" pairings. happy 10 year anniversary to the inception fandom!
> 
> this story is dedicated to ruby matthew's hair
> 
> (also i may have blacked out and written 5 more chapters)


End file.
